Okay here goes from one not long ago a newbie to another. yes your trans must match your tex map. make your tex map, then convert it to grey scale. Play with settings in your paint prog, like contrast brightness etc till you got a satifactory result for wot you want to achieve. save a copy. apply it in poser. experiment with your settings. I find trans max 100 and trans min 100 usually works. but play. reflection has to be black, and off. does that make sense? sometimes also helps to desaturate your tex before you convert Hey you other guys how am I doing for tuts??????

The greatest part of wisdom is learning to develop  the ineffable genius of extracting the "neither here nor there" out of any situation...."